1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle-mounted image recognition (or object recognition) apparatus and a method of manufacturing the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
A technique for detecting lines indicating a roadway (lane) on a road using a vehicle-mounted camera has recently been used for a lane keeping assist system or the like to improve driving safety of vehicles.
For example, there has been proposed a recognition apparatus that can capture an image of roadway dividing lines indicating a roadway (traffic lane or travel lane) by a camera installed in a vehicle and can recognize the roadway dividing lines or the road structure based on the image processing result of the captured image (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H8-315125).
In addition, there has been provided a lane recognition apparatus that can detect the positions of lane lines on left and right sides of a vehicle in an image captured by a vehicle-mounted camera (see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2007-264714).
Both of the apparatuses employ a focus-adjusted vehicle-mounted camera.
However, even if the focus is adjusted, sufficient resolving power cannot be necessarily obtained. Insufficient resolving power causes an error in recognizing a line such as a white line indicating a lane boundary drawn on a road surface. In order to reduce error occurrences, an expensive lens such as an aspherical lens that has a high resolving power needs to be used.